2026 Spring Journal of Scholarship and Practice

Home / Publications / Publication
The Spring issue of the AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice has been published and is on the AASA website. The articles in this issue offer a theme of conflict and crisis avoidance and management. They share a focus on how leadership preparation, professional learning structures, and intentional communication systems equip leaders to navigate complexity and prevent conflict from escalating into crisis.

Each piece highlights that challenges in schools—whether legal, instructional, or organizational—are rarely isolated events. Instead, they develop over time when leaders lack the knowledge, structures, or forums needed to respond thoughtfully and proactively.

Steven Baule and Jessica Cook’s article emphasizes the importance of foundational leadership competence, particularly in special education. By strengthening principals’ understanding of legal requirements, discipline protocols, inclusion practices, and IEP processes, leadership preparation programs can reduce misunderstandings and high-stakes conflicts with families and staff. This work positions crisis avoidance as a function of preparedness: leaders who are well trained are better able to act decisively, lawfully, and collaboratively before issues become adversarial or litigious.

Sarah Day Dayon, Jenni Conrad, and Timothy Patterson’s article along with Rod Uzat’s article extend this preventive lens from individual knowledge to organizational learning and communication. Learning Labs create structured opportunities for teachers and leaders to engage in professional dialogue, fostering trust and shared norms that reduce instructional and cultural conflict.

Similarly, the proposed digital reflection and messaging model offers leaders a way to capture learning before, during, and after crises, enabling collective sense-making and adaptive action. Together, these approaches frame effective leadership as relational and reflective, grounded in systems that promote dialogue, shared understanding, and continuous learning—key conditions for navigating uncertainty and avoiding organizational breakdown

Read Full Issue

Advertisement

Additional Articles

Staff

Thanks and Appreciation

The AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice would like to thank AASA, The School Superintendents Association, and in particular AASA’s Leadership Network, and particularly AASA’s Leadership Network and Valerie Truesdale, for their ongoing sponsorship of the Journal. AASA Leadership Network, the School Superintendents Association’s professional learning arm, drives educational leaders’ success, innovation and growth, focused on student-centered, equity-focused, future-driven education.

We also offer special thanks to Brian Osborne, Lehigh University, with assistance from Kenneth Mitchell, Manhattanville University, in selecting the articles that comprise this professional education journal and lending sound editorial comments.

The unique relationship between research and practice is appreciated, recognizing the mutual benefit to those educators who conduct the research and seek out evidence-based practice and those educators whose responsibility is to carry out the mission of school districts in the education of children.

Without the support of AASA, Brian Osborne and Kenneth Mitchell, the AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice would not be possible.

Interested in submitting an article? Learn more here

Additional Resources

Advertisement

Advertisement

Related Issues